ICC Note: Recently, Moroccan Christian activists spoke up via YouTube demanding more equal rights for religious minorities in the country. Christians in Morocco make up less than one percent of the population. Christians in Morocco cannot openly declare their faith and conversion is only recognized if the individual is converting to Sunni Islam.

11/02/2016 Morocco (Morocco World News):  A few months ago, some Moroccan Christian activists created a YouTube channel and posted videos making their presence known, claiming to be a religious minority standing up for their full rights as citizens.

This is being widely seen as a huge behavioral shift inside a religious community outside of Sunni Malikite Islam. This video is the first instance of Christian discontent with social and societal considerations ever witnessed in Morocco. There have been a few notable exceptions in other parts of the region, such as so-called “Brother Rachid,” host of an evangelical Christian television program in Europe, who has been very vocal in the media about his conversion from Islam to Christianity since 2010.

Just how many Christians in Morocco share the feelings expressed in the video is hard to determine in a country where 99% of the population is Sunni Muslim, while just 1% is comprised of Jewish (Judaism being recognized), Christian, Baha’I and even atheist and nonreligious people. Also complicating matters is the fact that many of this 1% tend keep their religion private, making it extremely difficult to take a thorough census of this population, which is not legally recognized.

As a result, the annual report from the U.S. State Department on human rights in Morocco remains one of the few reliable statistical perspectives available to track this issue. The 2014 report estimated the Jewish population, primarily seniors, at 3000 -4000 nationals, 2500 of them based in Casablanca alone, with the remainder living across the country. The same report placed the number of  Moroccan Christians at 4000, most of them ethnic Amazigh, who practice their religion in churches. Some estimates count the number of Moroccan Christian churchgoers at 8000. According to the report, there are also 400 Baha’is, 8000 Shiite Muslims from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and a few Moroccans.

During my investigation titled “the defectors of State religion in Morocco,” published in the Moroccan newspaper Al Massae on February 10, 2013, I had the opportunity to encounter a number of Moroccans who decided to convert to Christianity, Baha’I faith or Shi’ism. In the course of speaking with these people, it appeared to me that while the State recognizes the freedom of religion for Jewish people, the rest of these minorities have nowhere to practice their beliefs.  In addition to not being able to declare their belief, they’re also not allowed to convert to any other religion other than Sunni Malikite Islam.

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